


Let it go

by MarcellaEReeves



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Hero Worship, POV Lance (Voltron), Where Lance gets all his ideas about Shiro the Hero crushed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 18:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12513284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcellaEReeves/pseuds/MarcellaEReeves
Summary: The first time had been an accident. Over breakfast they’d been sitting, a group of strangers and aliens, in a castle, on a planet on the other side of the universe. They’d been sitting as Shiro (THETakashi Shiroganeno less! His hero, risen from the dead! Lance had to pinch himself) strolled in, cheerfully wishing them good morning as he assembled a plate of food goo and humming a tune as he did so.An annoying tune, and it irritated Lance that now his own thoughts couldn’t be left alone without someone mirroring them. It wasn’t until Pidge spoke that Lance realised the oddness, an expression over his -her- face, like she’d seen a ghost.‘Shiro…?’ Their leader turned, questioning look covering his face. Even Keith seemed to be horrified, and a bitter stroke flicked through Lance at the thought that perhaps he’d missed some vital clue. ‘How do you know that song? You weren’t on Earth whenFrozenwas released…’--Where Lance and the other Paladins discover that after forming Voltron, every persistent thought they were thinking prior gets lodged in all of their heads for the next week, and Lance finds out Shiro and Keith aren't as cool as he first thought.





	Let it go

**Author's Note:**

> Pretend: I love the characters and some sadist is forcing me to drag them like this. Too much? Okay, just pretend that VLD is set in the present day/slightly in the past where Shiro was captured when Frozen was released.

The first time had been an accident. Over breakfast they’d been sitting, a group of strangers and aliens, in a castle, on a planet the other side of the universe - as far as Lance could tell. They’d been sitting as Shiro (THE _Takashi Shirogane_ no less! His hero, risen from the dead! Lance had to pinch himself) strolled in, cheerfully wishing them good morning as he assembled a plate of food goo and humming a tune as he did so.  
  
An annoying tune and it irritated Lance that now his own thoughts couldn’t be left alone without someone mirroring them. It wasn’t until Pidge spoke that Lance realised the oddness, an expression over his - _her_ \- face like she’d seen a ghost.  
  
‘Shiro…?’ Their leader turned, questioning look covering his face. Even Keith seemed to be horrified, and a bitter stroke flicked through Lance at the thought that perhaps he’d missed some vital clue. ‘How do you know that song? You weren’t on Earth when _Frozen_ was released…’  
  
Well, that _did_ seem suspicious. He could see Hunk pondering the question too, but Shiro seemed to be genuinely curious. ‘Frozen? I thought I’d… made that song up on my own… Is that what it’s called?’ He seemed sheepish, shrugging a little but going to sit down anyway. ‘It’s been stuck in my head for a few days.’  
  
Lance had the same problem, and after he’d told the others they all had the same story.  
  
‘Okay, so maybe when we form Voltron, whatever one of us is thinking of, the rest of us will think of…’ Hunk was speaking as if it was some mechanical puzzle, which Lance supposed it was. ‘Remember after the first time? When we all couldn’t stop craving peanut butter cookies and it turned out that was the last thing Pidge had been thinking of when she thought we were going to die?’

That had irritated Pidge ‘- _One_ of the last things, Hunk’ 

‘Right right right, one of, but the point is we were _all_ craving them for days after. So maybe one of us was thinking of _Let it go_ and now it’s stuck in all of our heads.’  
  
Pidge was considering it, and the Alteans seemed to be genuinely puzzled. It was a cute look on Allura.

‘That would explain why I know all the words to a song I’ve had no way of ever hearing. So…’ Leadership mode was a good look on Shiro. ‘Moving forward, we should make sure we have a completely empty mind before we form Voltron. No food cravings, no songs, no wiring diagrams, nothing that will get stuck in anyone’s mind after the fight is over, okay?’ 

  
Lance found himself nodding in agreement until he found himself being stared down at by the other human occupants of the table.  
  
‘He means you, Lance. Next time don’t go into a fight singing Disney songs.’ The sheer accusation in Pidge’s tone was completely unfounded and insulting, and Lance found himself standing.  
  
‘Me?! I don’t even like Frozen!’ Okay, maybe he’d been forced to watch it a few dozen times with his younger cousins. The memory of them singing “Do you want to build a Snowman?” in his parent’s living room brought a painful stab at his heart, and so he pointed a finger in Keith’s direction as retaliation. ‘What about Keith? He seems like he wouldn’t watch Disney movies, but how do you know he doesn’t secretly know all the words to Mulan… or Beauty and the Beast?!’  
  
Keith was laughing at his accusation before it took on the typical harshness the youth wore like a weapon. ‘Me? You’re being ridiculous Lance.’  
  
‘Yeah, got to say dude, you do seem more likely to watch Disney movies than Keith’ Great, now Hunk was ganging up on him too. This was all he needed.  
  
Just as he was preparing to storm out dramatically, Shiro stood to diffuse the situation, calming everyone. Lance was still upset at being accused of doing something he hadn’t done. Stupid Keith, and stupid Hunk and Pidge for joining in.  
  
  
  
  
That was the first time they’d all had the same song stuck in their heads for a week after forming Voltron. It had been an accident, and they’d all agreed to clear their minds before each and every time after that.  
  
Yet here they were again, Lance was walking down the hall humming Thunderstruck after a particularly intense battle when he realised… actually, he didn’t like AC/DC or rock music, as cool as it had felt kicking Galra ass and imagining the song over the fight like some cool action movie sequence. “Test your hypothesis” or whatever their professors had said back in the Garrison, so as casually as he could manage, he slipped beside Hunk as he was working on some mechanical contraption.  
  
‘Say Hunk, do you uh… want to meet some girls?’ He grabbed at his lower face as he spoke, mentally replaying the song to find the next line of lyrics that he could remember. ‘Some dancers who give a good time?’  
  
Hunk narrowed his eyes, weird magnetic Altean screwdriver stopping as he considered Lance. ‘Do you… have Thunderstruck stuck in your head too Lance?’  
  
Instantly Lance jerked away from the table, arms shooting into the air. ‘Right?! We agreed, and then someone still went in thinking of a song! I bet it was Keith, he listens to that kind of stuff right?’Pure conviction laced his tone, but Hunk looked unconvinced.  
  
‘I don’t know man, I mean Keith wears the loner emo card, so I guess it should be him, but you said the Frozen stuff wasn’t you, so maybe it’s Pidge… or Shiro?’  
  
Although the Disney label hadn’t been unstuck yet, he let it slide as he instead considered both Pidge and Shiro in turn. Pidge seemed too young to listen to AC/DC, and Shiro seemed too cool to make head music videos. ‘No, it’s definitely Keith.’  
  
After conferring with both Shiro and Pidge and receiving denials it was enough evidence to pronounce Keith guilty. ‘You have committed crimes against the Paladins of Voltron, making crappy rock music videos whilst we were fighting the Galra. In punishment, you must wash all of the plates from dinner for the next month’  
  
‘But I didn’t do it! I don’t even like them?’ Keith’s protests were noble but ultimately lies. Lance still managed to get told off by Shiro though. _“You can’t force people to do the dishes without proof, Lance. Everyone washes their own plates.”_ yadda yadda yadda diplomacy yadda yah, Mullet favouritism again.  
  
Okay so maybe he couldn’t make Keith do all the chores. It didn’t mean he wasn’t guilty, they just needed a more accurate way of proving who was responsible the next time it happened. Unfortunately, that was probably as easy as finding out who silent farted in a crowded elevator.  
  
  
  
  
As it turned out, the most accurate way came in a crushing blow to Lance’s image of Shiro.  
  
‘Back in black?’ They’d stood as Shiro sat, looking as ashamed as Lance felt. They’d passed judgement then as a unit. ‘And you think we wouldn’t suspect you?’  
  
‘It could have been anyone.’ He’d protested. ‘It’s a cool song, anyone could have thought it.’ Unfortunately, Shiro had then realised with a groan that _“It’s a cool song”_ was admittance, and so had buried his face in his hands. But Lance had no sympathy, he couldn’t relax at night with it blurting all the way through his brain on a loop. Couldn’t fall to sleep.  
  
‘You were the one who made us promise! And there you were the whole time singing songs and pretending you were in some kind of… music video!’ Lance nodded at Pidge’s attack, arms still crossed over his chest.  
  
It was hard to reconcile the image of his hero with a man who hummed AC/DC while piloting an alien superweapon. What happened to the cool guy from the Garrison recruitment poster over his bed? He could see similar expressions mirrored in the other’s faces, except… except Keith’s, who was looking shiftily towards the door.  
  
And then there was a silent exchange between him and their ex-glorious leader. A pleading expression from the red paladin and a desperate shake of his head before Shiro stood. And Shiro stood like he had no business being judged, like he had instead passed judgement upon Keith, and it left Lance feeling completely confused until,  
  
‘Keith likes Disney movies.’  
  
It was such a bombshell that Lance didn’t register Shiro leaving. He didn’t key that it was a perfectly executed escape tactic because Keith - _Keith_ liked Disney movies. He opened and closed his mouth a few times as he processed the information and instead ended up looking like a suffocating fish. Desperate glances at the other paladins and it seemed that finally, he wasn’t the last one in the picture - Pidge seemed just a shocked and Hunk wore the expression that Lance registered as him desperately wishing he could stress-bake.  
  
In the perfect harmonics that Iverson would have wished they’d possessed only a tenth of back at the Garrison, the trio turned to face Keith. But his deer-in-headlights look was only held for a tick or two before he bolted, managing to look like he wasn’t running even though he’d crossed the room so quickly he must have been.  
  
Desperate to rub this new found knowledge over Keith like an ace Lance followed him into the corridor, only to turn one side, then the other, without any trace that the red paladin had ever been there. Blinking back at the other two occupants of the room with only exasperation and confusion in his entire body.  
  
‘What the hell was that?’  
  
Hunk was the first to recover though. ‘I don’t know, maybe it’s stress relief? Like you don’t get that talented without needing some kind of outlet?’  
  
Pidge had been turning the information over too. ‘It could be a prerequisite? My brother used to watch k-pop boy bands and my dad liked engineered space food. Maybe being cringe-worthy is part of the criteria…’ She adjusted her glasses, and Lance could tell she’d gotten nostalgic again.  
  
‘Well that doesn’t make any sense, I’m not cringe-worthy and I…’ only became a fighter pilot when Keith was kicked out. Suddenly things were starting to make sense. He should have started watching cartoons or something, he would have been put in the fighter pilot class the second he walked through the Garrison’s doors!  
  
But then that would have meant he’d have to actually _watch cartoons_.  
  
Like a _child._  
  
He shuddered ‘It’s not worth it. Being that good at flying isn’t worth the shame, give me ladies and pizza any day.’  
  
Hunk perked up, suddenly glad for the change in subject. ‘We should make a pizza, I can use some of those weird blue tree fruits that we got on that last planet. You know, the ones that taste like mozzarella?’  
  
Mozzarella pizza sounded great! ‘Now you’re talking buddy!’ He lightly punched Hunk on the shoulder. ‘Leave those two weirdos to watch Disney movies and listen to AC/DC, we’re going to have pizza!’ Also, the thought that pizza might somehow cheer Pidge up was a huge motivator. He pulled both his friends close, despite the height difference. ‘I love you guys.’  
  
He didn’t need to be weird to be technically great. He had his family and his friends, and he’d prove to them all that you could be technically superior without having a cringe-worthy hobby.  
  
But first, pizza.

**Author's Note:**

> Keith's fav Disney movie is Lilo & Stitch and you can pry that from my cold, dead hands. 
> 
> Also, Shiro would absolutely play "Thunderstruck" and "Back in Black" in the Black Lion cockpit during their fights with the Galra if he could. With the amount he uses the phrase "Suit up" he's 100% cringe boi who watches How I Met Your Mother. 
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr about headcanons!
> 
> Tumblr: marcellaereeves.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: twitter.com/MarcellaEReeves


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